Sustaining Innovation: Creating Nonprofit and Government Organizations That Innovate Naturally

Paul Light has captured the spirit of innovation. It is not aboutspectacular acts by individuals who labor against the odds, butabout the hard work of building organizations in which innovationis expected and possible. It is about tilling the soil so thatideas can flourish. Anyone who wants to take their organizationforward toward natural innovation should read this book.
--Walter F. Mondale

Any organization can innovate once. The challenge is to innovatetwice, thrice, and more?to make innovation a part of daily goodpractice. This book shows how nonprofit and governmentorganizations can transform the single, occasional act ofinnovating into an everyday occurrence by forging a culture ofnatural innovation.

Filled with real success stories and practical lessons learned, Sustaining Innovation offers examples of how organizations can takethe first step toward innovativeness, advice on how to survive theinevitable mistakes along the way, and tools for keeping the edgeonce the journey is complete.

Light also provides a set of simple suggestions for fitting thelessons to the different management pressures facing the governmentand nonprofit sector. Unlike the private sector, where innovationneeds only to be profitable to be worth doing, government andnonprofit innovation must be about doing something worthewhile. Itmust challenge the prevailingwisdom and advance the public good.Sustaining Innovation gives nonprofit and government managers acoherent, easily understood model for making this kind ofinnovation a natural reality.

PAUL C. LIGHT is director of the Public Policy Program at The Pew Charitable Trusts. He has taught at the University of Virginia and Georgetown University, and was most recently associate dean and professor of planning and public affairs at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is the award-winning author of The Tides of Reform: Making Government Work, 1945-1995 (1997), Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability (1995), and many other books, monographs, and articles.